Understanding the Role of Spiritual Leadership on Group Innovativeness: A Parallel Mediation Approach

In this dissertation, a theoretical and empirical intervening model was proposed and tested. The model investigated the both the direct and mediated effect of spiritual leadership on employees’ group innovativeness (GI) via workplace bullying (WPB) and tolerance to incivility (TTI) as mediating variables, under the lens of spiritual leadership theory, social exchange theory, and intrinsic motivation theory. Three hundred and sixty-eight full-time employees of four-star and five-star hotels in İzmir and Bodrum regions of Turkey were engaged in the survey. Data generated from this sample were analyzed using Structural equation modeling (SEM). The results show that spiritual leadership significantly predicted group innovativeness; workplace bullying and partially mediated this relationship. The findings of this thesis enrich spiritual leadership-workplace mistreatment-innovativeness nexus in hospitality management literature. Explicitly, the results implied that managers could draw on the tenets of love, hope, and vision of spiritual leadership theory in designing organizational goals and vision to foster meaningfulness climate that will deter the presence of bullying or incivility. Keywords: Spiritual leadership, Bullying, Tolerance to incivility, Group innovativeness, Turkey.